White Winter Hymnal
by The Phrenologikal Cat
Summary: Pre-Hellfire: A story of origins, of blood, of frost and fur. A story of wolves, of woods, of winter and silence. But mostly, a story of the hunt. Since BH is on hiatus until further notice, this is pure pandering.


**Phreno:** Hmm?. And what do I think this is?. Well, this little... _travesty_ is a small pet project to keep _certain people_ (glaring at a reviewer meaningfully here, you know who you are) entertained while I sort out what the hell I'm doing over on Bloody Hellfire. So. Uh. Expect an exchange of updates between this and BH. Oh!. And enjoy!.

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**_And so she comes to dream herself the tree,__  
__The wind possessing her, weaving her young veins,__  
__Holding her to the sky and its quick blue,__  
__Drowning the fever of her hands in sunlight.__  
__She has no memory, nor fear, nor hope__  
__Beyond the grass and shadows at her feet._**

- Hart Crane, _Abstract Garden_

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**First Chapter:**

**As They Run Across the World, They Leave Winter in Their Wake.  
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He was… running? Yes. Running. It was getting harder. Harder to remember. Not just remember yesterday from today. To remember this moment from the last one. It was impossible. He found himself doing things, and not knowing why. Soon he would have no mind at all, he would be just a rambling, shambling mess of hostility, knowing only to always run and always kill. But for now, he was running. Over snow, as it was, and he may have been in a wood, but all the trees were dead and twisted now, leafless and cold, turned to wailing ghosts by the mists of winter. The were unmarked and unremarkable, dead and cold and silent and empty, and they became unseen blurs as she snapped by them, cracking and crashing through branches, heedless of the trail of destruction he left behind him to play companion to his prints in the snow.

He was running. Yes. He'd lost it for a moment. Lost his mind. Lost that thought. But he was definitely running. But what as he chasing? What was the hunt?

Was it a hunt? Yes. He could feel it in his blood. In his bones. But the path was clear before him. Empty. What was being hunted?

He realised, belatedly, that his arm was hanging limp and useless by his side. It must have hurt terrible once, sent him mad with pain in fact, but now there was no pain left. There had been too much of it, and now there was only cold and chase. So he must be the prey. He must be the hunt. Through the snow, through dead, twisted trees. He was running. _Running running running running running runn–_

He didn't have memories any more. There was no differentiation between then and now. He was either hungry or filled, and there was only the time of the hunt and the time of sleep. He didn't have a sense of the future, and barely had any recognition of the past. He simply… was. There was no awareness of self. It was easier this way. He was tired for reasons he didn't understand anymore, and this brutally simplified life was easier.

But he had memory. _A_ memory. A thought that echoed back unbidden from the Lady of the Cold. It was hardly even a memory. It was… it was too real. Again, he could feel her hand, a soft weight, barely there, like winter's breath, on the soft fur of his skull, ice seeping through his veins and freezing the tempestuous anger that always consumed him. Always, always devoured his mind, taking away what he was.

"_This is a story of wolves that are not wolves."_

It was the snow and the hunt and the blood in his nostrils, warm and coppery, dribbling over his snout. Her voice confused him, tearing him from the upstart winter landscape and curling him into dark, damp memories of lair and peace and sleepy, restful silences. Dark eyes and dark skin and curiously bald, with spidery fingers tangled in the coils of wiry, white fur that rolled down his back. Keeping him still. Keeping him sane.

"_This was a long, long time ago, when the world was different. The face of the world did not change so easily, but the denizens would fluctuate wildly. Trees did not shed their leaves, snow did not fall. The weather would dance between cold and hot without reason or schedule, and for the most part, the landscape stayed the same. It was in this world that the wolves lived."_

She was of this time, with her soft whispers. Maybe she was not born then, but she lived there through her tales. She was a shard of past stuck in the present, a gaping wound between times, allowing truth in the guise of tall tales to spill through.

"_The first wolf was an ideal. A dream. A thought. An element of human nature. He was Old Golden Eyes. He was the great beast that lurked in man's heart, devouring their humanity and leaving only a monster. But once, long ago, the world was not so… exact. Mere thought could give life to a thing. Folk tales birthed many heroes and horrors, born from nothing but sheer strength of belief, but there was none so feared and worshipped as Old Golden Eyes, the Great Wolf of the Woods."_

It was a story about a monster. It was an old story, and all old stories were about monsters, slain by handsome, golden heroes, pure of heart to overcome their weakness of mind and body. People liked to go into great detail of all the sins of the monsters, regaling their audience with gory tales of foul deeds. Evil was so easy to describe.

"_He took the form of a wolf because this was a natural force that man knew and could easily misinterpret. And so Old Golden Eyes hunted man in these very woods, prowling through rain and baking sun. Once he hunted great warriors, testing their strength of will. But in time he grew weary of the battles, hungry only for the hunt."_

That was something he understood well. The hunt. He didn't know if he needed food. He was so hungry _all the time_. It gnawed at his belly, no matter how much he gorged himself on men and animals alike. It drove him mad, along with the fury. The aggression and the rage and the hunger, all mixed up inside him. It was only during the hunt that he felt alive. Satiated. Healthy. His lungs on fire and his legs shaking, barely able to carry him. That moment between success and failure, between catching the prey at the last moment or collapsing, weary and spent and starving, there was… something. He could not name. Could never remember, could never wrap up and keep, to taste on biting cold nights when there was nothing to hunt. It grew in him now, running as he was. More than the chase. More than the hunt. He was running after something…

"_He would shepherd villagers off from hunting and foraging parties, using sly words, hopelessly charismatic despite his belying monstrous appearance. Once he had them alone, he would show the beast he was, and tell his prey of the Game."_

Yes. The Game. That was it. Something about the Game. Something about the hunt and the hurt of the hunt that took him someplace. This was… important?

"'_We will run, the both of us,' he would grin, 'I shall even give you a head start. You shall run all the way to the village, and I shall chase you. If you manage to make it before I catch you, then I will leave your village alone forever. But if I catch you…' and hungrily, drool would drip from his massive, monstrous jaws, ready to snap up the terrified villager right then and there. Because everyone knew what a wolf did with its prey."_

To fill the gnawing in his belly, he ate. Wild animals, but when the Big Cold came and there were not enough animals to fill his belly, he took animals from human villages. Soon, they penned up the animals, hiding them behind dogs and walls and keen, careful eyes. Men came through the woods, shooting down the wolves, but they never found him. No. He was far, far too clever. He was no wolf. He was… let's see… he was a wolf that was not a wolf. Yes. Exactly that.

"_He would toy with them. Let them run, screaming, almost reaching the village. Then he would snap them up and carry them off, never to be seen again. He always took them alive, and the village would be able to hear the dying trails of screams in the air as the victim was carried away to uncertain fates. After all, he was the Great Wolf. The ultimate hunter. He always got his prey. When he tired of the taste of one village, he would allow them to win, moving on to the next horror story."_

He tried to sleep, like the bears. Curled up in a pale ball of agony, pain spiking all through him as the hunger fed the flames of rage. It was impossible. Impossible to ignore the pain. Impossible. So he went on the hunt. But there were not wild animals, and no village animals, and so he played the Game.

"_The villages all despaired, and many would starve rather than go out to gather food, for fear the Great Wolf would come, snapping up their men and women. It was in one nameless village that many people starved to death out of terror that they finally turned to the gods for guidance."_

It was a concept he fail to wrap his head around. Deities. There was only continued survival, and no greater force to guide him, take care of him. Only himself, always under threat of death. Slow hunger or great violence. Either could be his demise, and he only knew ways of avoiding such an end. There was no opportunity to dwell on something other than himself. It was a world that called for selfishness, and selfishness he knew well.

"_The role of gods depend on the needs of people. In these days, people need guidance. Temperance. Mercy and forgiveness. They hold great fear of possibilities. Of futures. Of what comes after breath. This is why they create the gods we have today. But in the older days, there was no call for mercy. That was weakness. What was needed was strength, because these were primal days. So they worshipped bas things. Cold and warmth. The sun. Blood. The hunt. And in those days… prayers were answered."_

These were ideals he could understand. Blood. He worshipped blood, in a way. Hunt. Chase. Hunger. He feared hunger, respected it. Was that worship? And pain. That he feared most. All sorts of pain, but mostly the First Pain. He knew pain at his core, knew to avoid it, but otherwise didn't remember it. But the First Pain. It echoed through him now, impossible to avoid. Always there, but not. A shadow.

"_One day a woman came to their village. She was called the Blue Lady, despite being impossibly pale. Impossibly white. White skin. White hair. White breath in the hot air, flowing from white lips. But her eyes. Impossibly blue, frightening, freezing to the core. Her skin so pale to be translucent that the spiderweb of blue veins could seen through it. She came in garments of flowing white, and where she stepped, a chill remained. When she arrived, the first words she spoke were, 'I am here to save you.'"_

It was the First Pain because it was the first thing he ever felt. It had birthed him. It was at the beginning of it all. Great, unimaginable pain, and before that there was… nothing. And still it was here. Always it was there inside of him. A reminder. Of what, he didn't know.

"_The Blue Lady went out to the woods, which had become dead and silent. Nothing lived in the woods where Old Golden Eyes went. All fled, as his hungry, dark taint spread. The trees had stopped speaking. The animals had all curled up and went to sleep, never to awaken. And the people shivered and starved. But still the Lady went out into this cold graveyard, until finally she met with the Great Wolf. His golden eyes, like sickly flames, burned against her icy blue, and together they stood in a cold, dead glade, staring the other down."_

The first time he'd seen a human – no. The first time a human had seen him. They had stared. Eyes to eyes. Gold against brown. Huge, frightened brown. What had it been like for that creature? That sad, weak, wet little human… to look into the jaws of a beast. There was only hostility, only hatred in those gold eyes, staring, staring, staring over that long, pointed snout. Black lips, slimy and wet with saliva, rolled back over impossible fangs. Too large for the mouth they sat in, mouth agape in an eternal snarl. All claws and teeth and limber muscles. All hunter. The great white beast. Like Old Golden Eyes, from a long time ago.

"_The truth was, Old Golden Eyes was scared. He was facing something unknown to him, but he knew it was powerful. So powerful, slowly chilling him to his bones. He snarled, baring his teeth, gouging the earth with his claws, trying to scare the woman in return. He puffed up to the size of a bear, huge and ferocious, but she stood firm, and for once he knew fear to his core. Because she could destroy him."_

The man had put a knife into his chest. So close to the heart. So close. He'd run away then, terrified. The man that was. And he had been chased. Those were the rules of the Game. But the hunger didn't leave room for games. The man didn't get a running start, and so, for a while, the hunger was sated. For a while.

"_He expected her to. But she only smiled ice at him, and her hands were gentle as she touched him, despite turning his fur to frost, and it was then that she challenged him to the Game." _

It was the only thing that lingered in his mind. The only thing he had. He would play the Game with the people he found. He did not know if they came from villagers. But he would make them run. It was so easy. They were so afraid. Then he would chase them. He would _hunt_ them. The hunger would abate as he ran, and for a time, it was enough.

"_Her voice rang like bells of ice. Soft chimes, but freezing. 'It is not death you seek. You are not a creature of death or of pain. You are not a creature of evil. They prayed to the hunt and you were born. Made to hunt. You _are_ the hunt. And so you do what you must, to live. It is not death for life. It is hunt for life. And forever you will hunt_ me_.' With light so blinding, the Blue Lady become a wolf, huge and white, patterns of blue like tendrils of frost on glass through her coat. She grinned, once, at the Great Wolf, and then she turned and ran."_

It was never about meat. Never about flesh and blood. He ran now, hunted, not hunter, and it was in him. The hunt. The chase. The burn of cold and exhaustion in his lungs. Running. Pain. In that pain – just a gentle numbness compared to the First Pain that prowled in the back of his mind, his own hunter – he found it. The taste of it. Beginning somewhere in his feet. It was in his veins, burning away the ice there. It curled through his lungs, fingers of warmth that changed into fire. It clawed up his throat, leaving bleeding trails. It consumed him, until all that was left of him was the fire, and for a moment…

"_The Great Wolf bounded after her. He was the fastest creature that had ever hunted, but no matter how quickly he ran, he could not catch her. He ran faster than he had run on any hunt, and always she bounded, just within his line of sight. A teasing white spirit, just where he could see her. Old Golden Eyes ran faster and faster, and the Blue Lady moved fast and faster ahead of him. He began to tire. His feet became heavy. His lungs burned. Exhaustion made his steps clumsy, made it hard to run, but always the Blue Lady ran on ahead, and so always he chased her. Faster and faster, desperate, so desperate. But pain and exhaustion birthed something he had never felt before: joy. As the wolves ran, they moved so fast that their feet stopped touching the ground. They moved so fast that they couldn't even be seen, becoming only a passing wind, freezing to the bone. The Blue Lady led the freezing cold across the world, blowing ice in her wake, leaving white snow. The Great Wolf chased after her, placing the world into a silent sleep during the cold aftermath of their chase. The cold would pass. Noise and life would return."_

He burned away the winter from his body. He was the coming summer. The fire of the sun. And in the hunt, his feet never even touched the ground. He became something other than a dumb, vicious animal. He became fire. He became fight. He became the essence of hunt and heat and blood, warm on cold, cold snow.

"_But always, the hunt went on."_

Blood, spilling out as the spear broke through his thigh, and another pierced his back. Blood dribbled from his maw, becoming a warm red scarf around his throat. Spilling summer all over the snow. Red blood on white fur as he fell. Red blood on white snow, melting the ice into a watery cocktail of seasons. His last thought was pain and anger. Fury like he had never felt before as the men caught up to him, their loud, yabbering voices ringing through his ears. But before that had been… had been… what? What had come before the anger?

"So, this is the fabled Demon of the Wraith Woods. I have to say, I'm disappointed to find such a… _puppy dog_."

The werewolf howled as the poison explored his veins. Then there was pain, greater than any he had felt before, greater even than the First Pain… and the woman's words echoed into black.


End file.
